before we all start nominating patrick anderson for humanitarian of the year, let's remember his motives for doing what he did. he got paid an extra two years of salary, and diluted our aru stock by giving 2.3 million shares to his cronies on the board, and sold another 15 million to kinross at a below market price. then he went to noront to run a similar scam there, trying to take control of the company.

Based on everything we've seen from this govt. I'd say Aurelian was told in no uncertain terms to do the deal with Kinross. How else do you explain the lack of a proxy battle? How else do you explain the fact that KB and JP are still pals? (He was on Jim's show just last week recall) If there was nothing KB could do, then certainly JP wouldn't hold it against him. As for PA, he merely did what any upstanding opportunist would do in the circumstances: bail and leave the shareholders to fend for themselves.

if you invest in juniors you should be willing to hold on for the long term, and ride out whatever dumb things the government of ecuador does. correa won't be there forever, and the gold is still waiting under the old aru concessions. those of us who held our kinross shares will only get a glancing bite of what could have been a great success story. one way or another, i expect kinross will build the fdn mine one of these years, but the rewards will be diluted across a much larger shareholder base.

I'm not quite so optimistic. As Ecuador sinks deeper into a swamp of its own creation, I expect desperate measures to ensue, including nationalization of all resources. The operating contract portion of the mining law points to this. So does the clause that denies recourse to international courts.

Doug Casey is right. These things are burning matches. As for Ecuador, it's just another bonfire of the vanities.

ebear